At airports, passengers have to check in and deposit their baggage prior to their flight. Deposited baggage is furnished with a label and taken away on a conveyor system to a processing area. In the processing area the baggage is sorted on the basis of the affixed label, and is ultimately placed on board the correct aircraft.
Until recently, an employee of the airline concerned or a member of the ground staff handled the checking in and depositing of the baggage. At the present time, passengers who are taking only hand baggage can check in independently, in other words without the intervention of an employee of the airline or a member of the ground staff, using electronic systems. It is, however, still customary for the deposit of hold baggage for an employee of the airline or a member of the ground staff to take receipt of that baggage, assess it for weight, measurements and transportability and furnish it with a label.
The abovementioned known method of depositing baggage requires an employee of the airline or a member of the ground staff. To start with, that means wage costs. In addition, it has the further disadvantage that many employees of different airlines or members of ground staff with a corresponding number of desks are required in order to be able to carry out the method. On account of limited availability of desks and desk staff, long queues of waiting passengers can form. Expansion of handling capacity is usually hampered by the available space at the airport.
For the rest, a baggage deposit system in which a passenger can check in and deposit his baggage himself is known. In the case of this known system, however, supervision by airline staff or ground staff is still needed, inter alia because the deposit system involves only an adaptation of existing desks, which are not suitable for independent handling of baggage deposit without staff supervision.
A problem of the known desks is the open nature of the conveyance system. If no desk employee is present, there is insufficient means for preventing a passenger or the passenger's children from following the baggage and in this way gaining access to forbidden and/or dangerous territory, or to the baggage of others.